The Prettiest One: A Thriller (47 page)

“My problem,” Chops said, “is that I don’t want to be arrested tonight. Which means this has to end now.”

Chops’s plan was to kill the woman and shove her toward the guy with the gun. That should distract him enough for Chops to disarm him. Then he would shoot both of the boyfriends or whatever they were, fire a few rounds out the window to slow down the cops, let them think this could turn into a standoff. Finally, he’d kill his father. Then he’d leave through the back door—while the cops were thinking about trying to negotiate with him—and hope like hell he made it to safety before they caught up to him.

It was a lousy plan, almost certainly destined for failure, but it was all he had. He wasn’t going to prison. He couldn’t allow that. He couldn’t live with what that would do to his family.

“Close your eyes, Katie,” the guy with the gun said to Caitlin.

Chops understood. The man cared for her and didn’t want her to see her own blood spilling out in buckets. Better for her to die without that image in her mind. Chops respected that. Still, he didn’t have time to waste.

“Trust me, Katie,” the man added. “Close your eyes.”

Josh watched events unfolding and felt impotent. There was simply nothing he could do but observe. He didn’t have a weapon. One move on his or Bix’s part could make Bookerman’s son cut Caitlin’s throat. This was a standoff with Caitlin in the middle. And now it sounded as though Bookerman’s son was about to bring this to a close. He looked ready to use the knife. Why didn’t Bix
do
something? He had a gun. Time was running out. And all he could think to do was tell Caitlin to close her eyes, like he had when he wanted her to remember how to shoot pool . . .

Could that be it?

“Close your eyes, Katie,” Bix said calmly.

Caitlin looked into Bix’s eyes for a moment, then closed her own. Bix raised his gun an inch. “You can do it, Katie,” he said.

“Sorry it has to end this way, Dad,” Bookerman’s son said, “but I’ve got to finish this right now. Say good-bye to pretty Caitlin.”

“No!”
Darryl Bookerman cried in a broken voice.

And then it all happened fast . . .

Caitlin opened her eyes and swung her leg far out in front of her, then brought it back hard and fast, her heel connecting with George Maggert’s shin with enough force to sound like a Louisville Slugger crushing a fastball. Maggert cried out and released his grip both on his knife, which dropped from his hand, and on Caitlin, who fell to the floor. For a second, Maggert had no one in front of him to take a bullet for him, which must have been Bix’s plan because the instant Caitlin was clear, he pulled the trigger and . . .

He missed. The bullet sizzled past Maggert and shattered a window behind him while Maggert lowered his shoulder and charged, reaching Bix in three long strides, slamming into him before he could fire another shot. The two crashed into the far wall. Maggert clamped one hand on Bix’s throat and the other on his gun hand, and somehow, despite Bix’s own considerable strength, wrenched the weapon from his grip and was turning it on him as Josh darted forward and threw a punch as hard as he could, with all the force of his momentum behind it. The blow caught Maggert on the ear and his head snapped to the side and he released his hold on Bix and staggered a few steps to the side. Josh looked for the gun in Maggert’s hand, but his punch must have knocked it loose.

Hunnsaker had heard the report of the gun.

“Gunshot,” she cried. “Go, go,
go
.”

She pulled her own piece and ran toward the house fifty yards away, with four cops in uniform at her sides.

Josh thought that the good guys might have actually won the fight. George Maggert was both outnumbered and unarmed now . . . until he reached down into his boot and drew out a second knife. He slashed at Bix, who jumped back, narrowly avoiding having his midsection sliced open, but as he dodged, he stumbled and fell backward. Instead of finishing off Bix, though, Maggert went after the only man still on his feet . . . which was his mistake, because as he bore down on Josh, covering the distance between them in four long strides, knife raised and ready to strike, Josh saw Caitlin streaking toward him from his right side, swinging the knife Maggert had dropped when Caitlin kicked him. Just before Maggert reached Josh, Caitlin drove the blade up to its hilt in the side of Maggert’s neck. Maggert stood for a moment, tottering unsteadily, blood flowing from his mouth.

Chops dropped to his knees, then fell on his side. He couldn’t believe how fast it had all come apart. He couldn’t believe it would end like this for him. He wondered if his wife and daughter had gone to the circus that evening without him. Then his last thoughts were of little Julia’s face and how disappointed Rachel was going to be with him.

Caitlin looked down at the second Bookerman she’d killed in two days, then turned to face the only one still alive. He had risen from the couch, leaving his oxygen tank behind, and was shuffling quickly away across the room on his frail, spindly legs. At first she thought he was heading for the doorway to the hall and she marveled that he thought he would be able to run away. Then she saw the gun lying against the wall and realized that reaching it was his objective. She flew after him, over Bix, who had just started to rise from where he’d fallen. Bookerman was closer to the gun but Caitlin was far faster, and as he bent to pick up the weapon, she grabbed his shoulder and yanked back, spinning the old man around. He staggered backward, losing his footing, and dropped to the floor where he lay with his long limbs stretched out, looking like a spider dying on its back. Caitlin calmly picked up the gun.

“Finish him, Katie,” Bix said.

Bookerman looked up at her. Even now there was nothing in his eyes. Somehow, despite the tear rolling down from one of those black stones, there was still no emotion in them. But there was something in his voice, something pathetic, when he said, “I was so close . . . after so long, I had you again . . . the prettiest one . . .”

“Do it, Katie,” Bix urged.

“Caitlin?” Josh said.

Caitlin stared down at a man who deserved death as much as any man did. She heard footsteps and someone shouted, “Police.” A woman’s voice. “Raise your hands, take two steps backward, and kneel on the floor with your hands above your head.”

On the floor, Bookerman was still mumbling to himself. “H-how could she get away again . . . my pretty little Caitlin . . . after so long, so many years . . . I was so close . . .”

“Caitlin Sommers,” the cop said again. “Raise your hands right
now
.”

Caitlin was still pointing the gun at Bookerman, who was still lamenting the fact that he had lost her again. And even now she saw nothing, nothing at all in his eyes. Was he even human? Would killing him even be a sin?

“Caitlin,” the cop said again, “don’t move anything but your head, but I want you to look at me.”

Caitlin turned her head, just her head, and saw a woman in plainclothes pointing a gun at her. Two police officers in uniform stood behind her doing the same.

“My name is Charlotte Hunnsaker, and I don’t know you, and I don’t know what the hell happened here or what this man may have done to you, but I know one thing for certain . . . he’s not worth it.”

Caitlin looked into the woman’s eyes for a long, long moment, then without another glance at Bookerman, she took her finger off the trigger, raised her hands over her head, and lowered herself to her knees. One of the uniformed officers walked over quickly and took the gun from her.

“Good decision,” the woman said as she stepped up, took Caitlin’s hands one by one, and snapped cuffs on them.

Caitlin looked over at Bix. He was rubbing the back of his head, but he seemed to be okay. She remembered him calmly saying,
Close your eyes.

She said, “I guess you taught me a little self-defense, too.”

“I taught you a lot of things,” he said with a half smile.

Josh also seemed fine. Caitlin met his eyes and nodded tiredly. It was over.

“Caitlin Sommers,” Hunnsaker began, “you’re under arrest for . . .”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

JOSH WAS WAITING FOR CAITLIN outside of Bridgewater State Hospital, a Massachusetts state mental-health facility tasked with housing and treating the criminally insane, as well as evaluating individuals for purposes of the criminal justice system. Among other issues, the experts at Bridgewater helped shed light on numerous important questions, including a patient’s competency to stand trial or, as in the case of Caitlin Sommers, her criminal responsibility. After forty days of comprehensive evaluation, a team of doctors and psychologists eventually came to several conclusions about Caitlin. First, even though it was not uncommon for patients and inmates to try to evade responsibility for their actions by claiming to have suffered amnesia, it was their opinion that Caitlin had indeed experienced a protracted fugue state, probably for at least the second time in her life. She had no memory of the seven-month period during which she had lived in Smithfield or of the events that had occurred during that time, nor was she likely ever to recall them. Second, given that she had adopted an entirely different personality during that time, it was almost as though a different person had participated in those events . . . and had shot Michael Maggert/Bookerman. Third, given that she had likely entered the fugue state as a reaction to the extremely traumatic abduction attempt by the man she eventually killed, a man who was the son of the pedophile who had abducted her when she was a child and who bore a striking resemblance to his father, and also given that she was almost certainly never going to find herself in a similar set of circumstances, it was highly doubtful that she posed a danger to others, even in the unlikely event that she entered another fugue state in the future. So, after having her mind dissected for almost a month and a half, Caitlin was deemed fit for release from the hospital’s custody.